The First Step

So this is the first official post, hopefully of many more to come.
If you're reading this, you may already have come across the About Me, My Phobia & My Journey page, if you haven't, I'd love for you to go and give it a read. It was the first thing I wanted to write for the blog, because I felt it was important for potential readers to get to know me, my background, and the background on my phobia (and of course, my first steps towards overcoming it, which is what this blog is all about!). I wanted to create a little more familiarity, so that you can see that I am a real person (rather than hiding behind an internet persona). The idea behind this blog is show people who may also be suffering with a phobia that they are not alone with their fears, and that there are other people out there who understand, people who can relate to them, and people they can relate to in turn. I didn't think this would be as effective if I didn't reveal myself at least a little bit. People can't relate to avatars and usernames.

What I didn't mention on my page, in much depth, was the therapy route that I have decided to go with (however, if you know what CBT is, you may already have guessed from the title of the blog). Yes, I have decided that Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is the right way to go about things, and the therapist that I saw earlier today, for my first session, agreed that this is the best route for me.
I will be creating another page, in the near future, explaining the basics of CBT (from what I currently understand, and from what I gather from further research), and about how I think this will work from my perspective.

I will also be posting journal entries that I write after each CBT session. As I've already mentioned, I had my first session today, and I have already written my first journal entry, which (with any luck) will be posted tomorrow. This is something that I hope will make me think about my own phobia more, and therefore understand it in such a way that I can explain it to others. This is something that will ultimately help with the therapy because, for it to work, the therapist needs to be able understand my thought processes - what goes through my head and how I feel - when I'm confronted with my phobia.
The therapist asked me to write journal entries for each specific time I am faced with my phobia, on any level - be it an image of a fish, fish on TV, walking past the fish counter in a supermarket, or the possibility of eating fish etc. I will talk more about this in tomorrow's journal entry, but I will also be posting these smaller journal entries of my confrontations and how they make me feel.

Other posts that I have planned are things like how my phobia affects my every day life, and other life experiences, and I also want to write about my personal aims, should I get to the point where I can entirely conquer my fears. These aims are very important to me, and I'd like to think that I will be able to reach them.

I'm hoping that this blog will reach at least a few people who share my experiences in some way or another, but also those who don't have a phobia, so that they might be able to understand a little better how it feels to live with one, and how it can alter your life.
When I've spoken to various different people about my phobia recently (something I have strived to do, in order to prepare myself for the therapy sessions, where I'll be talking to a stranger about something I don't usually vocalise), it has come to my attention that people don't really talk about these kinds of things very often, particularly if it involves a less common phobia (i.e. a phobia other than of spiders, heights, the dark etc, which have almost become accepted as 'normal' fears, where others, like mine, have not). I think it's a great shame that people sometimes don't feel that they can talk about these things, and I have personally found it very helpful to discuss my problems with others, at length. I have become more open about my problems, and this has been the main factor in feeling that I am finally ready to confront and defeat my phobia.

Comments and discussions are always appreciated, and welcomed with friendly, open arms, on this blog. Like I said, talking about it really helped me!
I have also set up a contact page, where you can fill out a google docs form, which will come directly to me. You can send in general comments (if you don't want them to be publicly published just yet), and you can also ask me questions. If you enter your email address, I will be more than happy to drop you a response, and we can have a private chat, if that's what you need! I promise I don't bite!